SpongeBob SquarePants lives in a pineapple, under the sea. He is a fully sentient sea sponge who wears brown pants and a red tie.

He has won more than 300 consecutive employee-of-the-month awards from a fast-food restaurant where he would pay to work if they didn't pay him.

His best friend is a pink starfish named Patrick, who qualifies as the first invertebrate with buttocks.

Together SpongeBob and Patrick sing fast-food jingles as if they were auditioning for "Les Miserables," not out of irony, for irony is either hopelessly far above them or admirably far below them, but out of pure consumer adoration.

Their total IQ would be approximately 60, if rounded upward.

The most valuable item in their undersea universe of Bikini Bottom is the secret recipe for the Krabby Patty, over which kingdoms have fallen and countless shellfish have lost their lives.

There you have it. The SpongeBob world in a clamshell.

If none of that seems remotely amusing to you, stay well away from "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie." Remain in your world of bitter coffee grounds and repressed show tunes. SpongeBob is too good for you, and we won't have you jading him with your Mr. MeanPants approach to life.

Yes, SpongeBob is better in the 12-minute doses of undiluted idiocy that launched him on Nickelodeon five years ago. At 87 minutes, you might say "SpongeBob" is a few anemones short of a reef. But as my editor pointed out, 50 great minutes of SpongeBob beats two pompous hours of "Troy" any day.

Creator Stephen Hillenburg deserves endless credit for making today's smartest kid entertainment out of an absorbent sea sponge and Patrick, who is differently-abled even by starfish standards.

But here's hoping the movie format should finally bring credit due to the two voices that make SpongeBob so funny, Tom Kenny as squarepants Bob and Bill Fagerbakke as the blockhead Patrick. Kenny breathes giddy life into every naove utterance of SpongeBob, who is permanently ecstatic to have won the low-pressure job of village idiot. Fagerbakke, best known as Dauber on the old TV sitcom "Coach," turns sounding stupid into high art. It is sublime to see pink Patrick squeeze into fishnet stockings and leather go-go boots to save the day, while calmly declaring "I'm on it" in a voice low enough for whales to hear.

Plot, you ask? Your kids will figure it out for you. To turn a phrase, if nautical nonsense be something you wish, then speed to this movie like a school of fish. That SpongeBob - absorbent and porous and utterly hilarious is he.

TITLE: "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie"DIRECTOR: Stephen HillenburgCAST: Voices of Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Jeffrey Tambor, Scarlett Johansson, Alec BaldwinRATED: PG (mild crude humor)GRADE: * * * * (on a scale of 5)